A financially-troubled Derbyshire council leader has compared the planned appointment of an ICT digital director with a possible £108,772 annual salary to an essential submarine engineer without whom the submarine would sink.
Derbyshire County Council voted unanimously during the Full Council meeting on November 29 to appoint a Chief Technology Officer and Digital Director whose possible salary has been evaluated as between £99,063 to £108,772 per annum.
County Council Leader, Cllr Barry Lewis, told an earlier cabinet meeting on November 23: “If you think of the county council as something like a submarine and the IT software is something like the engine of that submarine, and if you don’t have a good engineer that submarine sinks.”
The new role has been given thorough consideration after the council had forecast a £46.4m budget deficit for the 2023/24 financial year which it has recently announced has been reduced to £33m following a number of drastic actions and cost-saving measures.
However, following a rigorous assessment and analysis the council believes the new, costly ICT digital director role is essential.
The council has established that 81per cent of its service delivery is reliant upon ‘on premise’ digital applications, and that 75per cent of its network infrastructure and 42per cent of its storage servers are already out of contracted support, with the remaining infrastructure and storage servers due to go out of contracted support from 2025-27.
Subsequently, the council’s digital strategy is being developed to drive and support service delivery in the future with a Digital Strategy Vision which has been described by three elements ‘Simplify, Digitise and Grow’.
The Digital Strategy’s objectives include: Moving to a modern cloud-based infrastructure; Achieving an integrated application landscape to provide efficient interoperable systems and processes; Automate manual processes to provide additional capacity and deliver improved services; Improve user experience by designing customer-centric services; Utilise an Enterprise Architecture function to provide architectural governance, proactive solutions and reduce complexity; And create a Business Information and Data Analytics function so the council can provide evidence and insight for proactive decision making.
Derbyshire County Council’s ICT Strategy has recommended that the future service is led at a director level by a Chief Technology Officer who will be supported by an Assistant Director to lead Strategy and Enterprise Architecture, and Heads of Service to lead Service Management, with continuous improvement and business support.
The responsibilities of the director-level CTO’s role will include: Developing and implementing the Digital Strategy and ICT Strategy; Providing technical guidance and advice to directors, officers and leaders; Holding responsibility for the council’s technology spend; Monitoring and assessing the performance and efficiency of the technology systems; Evaluating and selecting the appropriate technology vendors, partners, platforms, and systems; Overseeing and supervising the research and development of new technologies; And staying up to speed with the latest technology.
Derbyshire County Council has stated the vacant Director Transformation and Strategy role is to be removed and replaced by the director level Chief Technology Officer to lead the future ICT service, and the salary will be supported from an increase in the ICT revenue budget or from commensurate savings made elsewhere.
Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Corporate Services and Budget, Cllr Simon Spencer, told the Full Council meeting: “Without a good system every service area will struggle. This will focus on the ICT challenges. As such, I am happy to move recommendations in this report.”
The director-level Chief Technology Officer’s salary is expected to be above a £100,000 threshold which required an agreement from councillors at the Full Council meeting.
Councillors voted unanimously to approve the salary package for the role of Director Digital, of up to £108,772 per annum, and to amend the Pay Policy Statement to reflect the new leadership structure, and to authorise the Monitoring Officer to make the necessary amendments to the Constitution.
The council stated that the recommendations were necessary to comply with the legislative, statutory guidance and constitutional requirements and to ensure that the Pay Policy Statement and Constitution remain up to date.
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